It's somewhat better than MK:Deadly Alliance, which is to say it might be the best fighting game for totally casual players. But the fighting game elitist in me says that Soul Calibur 2 is popular with casual players AND is a much better game, so I'd say you're honestly better off with it.

We enjoyed MK:DA for a while, so I gave it a positive review on Caltrops 1.0, but I won't here. It's the same game except:

- Chess mode is actually fairly fun. Nice little nod to Archon.
- Tetris mode sucks. The AI is ridiculously cheap. Imagine playing chess against Deep Blue, except you only got five seconds to make your next move. You need a chess-like kind of thinking-ahead ability to play Tetris mode well in MK:DA in order to set up massive combos, but it's just not possible in a Tetris-style game, whereas it's a piece of cake for even moderately tough AI opponents.
- Konquest mode MOTHERFUCKING SUCKS. The one thing this mode is great for (aside from revealing some shitty backstory you won't care about anyway) is helping you learn different fighting styles - but the insane thing is once you succeed in a certain tutorial battle (i.e. Learn Combo #1), you're done. You can't go back. So if you didn't write down that combo, and if it's not one of the two or three basic combos listed in the main menu that's always accessible, then you're screwed. And I can't emphasize how fucking boring the fucking RPG-like fedex quests are. Remember the fun that was doing a bunch of fetch quests for Mebbeth in Planescape:Torment? That's 99% of the Konquest mode experience.
- Even worse, there's so much unlockable shit. 95% of it is useless, but the 5% that isn't is actually GREAT stuff you won't want to pass up. Almost half the character roster, half the stages, all the alternate costumes - you have to unlock them. What motherfistfucking sucks is that it's no longer enough to just accumulate enough coi... sorry, Koins in the arcade, chess, or Tetris modes to purchase the krypts that hold these unlockables. No, now you can only unlock some of the krypts with keys that you can only find in Konquest mode.

It was ranted about before here, but this game finally caused me to SNAP!!! about the exact same subject: I'm sick of unlockables, at least when it comes to multiplayer. Especially in fighting games. Boss fighters, okay - lock them, I don't care, they're usually unbalanced anyway so it's not like I'd use them in multiplayer. But Raiden?! Sindel?! Liu Kang?! Why the fuck can't I play them as soon as I hit the power switch on the PS2? Of course, it's because I haven't done 5,000 bullshit "help me find my missing necklace :(" quests in konquest mode. KEYFUCKINGRIST this is so idiotic. Virtua Fighter 4 didn't make me unlock Akira or Pai. Guilty Gear X2 made me unlock, what, that Robo-Ky guy that no one likes anyway? Soul Calibur 2 is the only other game that has way too many unlockables, but at least it's not an indescribable pain in the ass to discover them.

The more I think about it, the more I'm all like "fuck this game". MK's supposed to be the most accessible fighting game out there, so why the fuck is so much of the good stuff inaccessible until you endure so much of the bad stuff for so long? Worst game design decision ever.

Stick with Soul Calibur 2, it's prettier, more fun, the unlockables still suck but at least they're not as completely insufferable to unlock as they are in MK:D. If you must play a Mortal Kombat game, go back to Deadly Alliance - the gameplay's literally identical aside from the combo patterns you have to memorize, the characters introduced in Deception aren't anything to write home about, and DA won't make you play it's comparatively wonderful Konquest mode for eternity in order to unlock goddamn Raiden. If you don't give a shit about playing with others, or if you actually know people who've gotten great at them, snag Guitly Gear X2:Reload or Virtua Fighter 4:EVO.